Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable members. I am grateful for the opportunity to come and address this committee today.
My name is Matthew Barber. I am a Ph.D. student studying Islamic thought and Middle Eastern history at the University of Chicago. I had done research with the Yazidi community for several years prior to the genocide, and I was living in Iraq when the genocide took place. After that, I began to respond and advocate for the community, and later served for one year in Iraq, 2015-2016, leading Yazda's projects there in humanitarian relief and advocacy work for the Yazidi community.
As a non-Canadian, I cannot speak to the issues here in Canada, but I can talk about the situation in Iraq at length and hopefully provide some insight. I am really grateful that the Government of Canada is providing leadership and, hopefully, serving as an example to my country on the kind of response that's needed for the Yazidi community. We should feel embarrassed that we are not doing what you are doing, that we are not doing more.
In terms of the situation of the survivors in Iraq at present, there are still people living near the Yazidis who have strong sympathies for the IS organization—the Islamic State—but the organization has been dismantled and eliminated in terms of being an organized threat right now to the Yazidi community. That doesn't mean there will not be more possibility of genocide down the road, but at present slaughter and additional cases of enslavement are not the primary risk.
The case for bringing survivors to Canada or to other countries for resettlement remains strong, however, and it has a lot to do with the conditions that people are living in now. There are four main areas that I believe are of issue regarding the recovery of survivors.
One is the lack of proper mental health and psychosocial supportive services in the country, which was discussed in the last panel.
Another is political instability. I disagree with Dr. Akhavan that somehow the Shia militias have replaced the IS organization as a threat, impeding the return of Yazidis to the area. That is not true. The Kurdistan Regional Government provided a much greater impediment to the return of people to Sinjar. That threat is no longer an issue, because KDP, the ruling party, has withdrawn the peshmerga. Things are actually more positive now with regard to the potential return of people, but things remain difficult and there is political instability. There needs to be a transition from the Hashi Shabi Shia militias to the kind of self-administration the Yazidis have been asking for in the last three years. In this context, there remains political instability, even if things are slowly improving.
Economic conditions are another factor. It is very difficult for people to return to Sinjar, where their homes and farms are destroyed. Many women who were enslaved, and now carry tremendous psychological damage and mental health issues, have to work long hours in a very difficult and bleak environment. This is not the environment that can provide the opportunity for a person to rebuild their sense of personal dignity after having suffered the kind of trauma that Mr. Hadji Hesso talked about in the previous panel. Canada can provide an environment where women who have been subjected to this form of violence have a better opportunity to recover in terms of their mental health and so forth.
The last issue, I would say, would be the Yazidi family. Some families are very healthy. They have embraced their female family members post-enslavement in the way that the Yazidi religious leadership has requested they do. Other families—as is the case with families anywhere in the world—are less healthy and are struggling with issues of stigma and so forth. Also, there is an issue if young women are pushed towards early marriage and towards becoming mothers while they haven't had a chance to recover psychologically from these issues or even think about whether they want to be mothers. Motherhood is very challenging in this post-enslavement context. I believe that expanding the number of Yazidi refugees who can be resettled in Canada, specifically for the survivor population, is a very good idea and an important idea.
My last point, before I finish, is that I believe that, in addition to this resettlement strategy, there needs to be a multipronged approach to a comprehensive response to the Yazidi genocide and the needs of the people. The purpose of all these resettlement efforts and so forth should be the long-term preservation of the Yazidi community. It is wonderful to resettle several thousand people here. That is of major benefit to them. However, there are several hundred thousand Yazidi people who will not leave Iraq, who will remain there, some by choice, some by lack of opportunity to leave. Some of them who stay by choice are committed to rebuilding their homeland, the Sinjar area, which is a very important religious centre. I can speak at length about the nature of the Yazidi religion and the fact that Iraq remains an important focus for religious practice. It is hard to replicate that in the diaspora, so preserving the Iraqi homeland for the Yazidi community is very important for its tradition and culture.
I know that this committee is focused on citizenship and immigration, but I believe it should dialogue with other committees in the Canadian government and other agencies to also focus on humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts for the Yazidi community that remains in Sinjar. This is vital.
Lastly, I will just mention that when I was in Iraq, I supervised a resettlement program on our side—the NGO side, with Yazda—with the Australian government to resettle Syrian-born Yazidi refugees who had crossed from Syria into Iraq because of the violence of the Syrian conflict. Australia resettled that entire population to their country and worked entirely with us through that process. With regard to all of the questions that the other member had about working with the UNHCR, about whether Yazidis want to leave, and ethnic and religious identity, and challenges like these, it's unfortunate that the member has left because I can also speak to those issues in the Q and A.
Thank you.